“It’s a beautiful day, don’t let it get away,” sings U2 on their album All That You Can’t Leave Behind. On the one hand, we live most of our lives trying to find what is valuable to us. On the other, we live most of our lives trying not to lose what we’ve found. Here’s the bad news: you will lose it all. Here’s the good news: unless it is resurrected.
“Why do you seek the living among the dead?” ask the angels. We could reframe the question: “Why do you seek the dead among the living?” In other words, something has occurred that has radically changed everything. You are in the world now either alive living among the dead or you are dead among the living.
God’s message delivered by the angels is that an exchange has occurred! “The new has come and the old has gone; the day has arrived and the night has passed; the light has shone and the darkness has flown away. Do you really know what you’re looking for?” Henry Ford once said that “If he had asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.” In the resurrection, God was exceeding all that the disciples knew to ask and look for.
What did resurrection mean? To the Greeks it meant seeking the separation and liberation of the soul from the body. To the Jews it meant the renewal and restoration of all things, but at the end of time. “The idea of an individual being resurrected in the middle of history, while the world continued on burdened, was inconceivable.” (Timothy Keller) Yet, here and now, the angels proclaim to two women, “He is not here, he is risen.”
I recently told my kids it was “ten till eight” and time to get ready for school. My youngest daughter turned to me, stared, and said, “Dad, I don’t know what that means.” The two women might have stared and said the same thing to the angels. “We don’t know what that means.” If this was true, if Jesus was raised from the dead, it meant the new age, the future world, the coming kingdom had begun in Jesus.
The resurrection changes everything about your life right now! It occurred at dawn, marking not only the beginning of a new day but the day of new beginnings. God was watching over the dawning of a new and beautiful day.
“The message of the resurrection is that this world matters,” preaches N.T. Wright. And, moreover, Paul preaches in 1 Corinthians 15 that if Jesus is dead, you are in sin and darkness forever and this world is as good as it’s going to get. But if he is alive, you can be saved from your sin and resurrected in a new heaven and earth. The empty tomb alone didn’t prove the resurrection. The living Jesus did!
Jesus didn’t rise from the dead to become the Savior and King of the world. He rose from the dead because he was the Savior and King of the world. Resurrection is God’s vindication upon his enemies—the devil, sin, and death—and his validation of Jesus as the Christ— the Anointed One, the Messiah, the One True Lord of heaven and earth. Many had been crucified, but only one crucified was resurrected
Only him, Jesus Christ, has the authority to walk you across death to life, because only Jesus came across life and death to rescue you. And he wants to make an exchange for resurrection life now. But only what is crucified can be resurrected. Only what is lost in him can be found in him. Only what is surrendered to him can be rescued by him. Only at the cross can the exchange of new for old be made. Only what is crucified with and buried with Christ will be raised with him into a new and beautiful day that will never get away from you.